Arquà (for the last syllable is accented in pronunciation,
although the analogy of the English language has been observed
in the verse) is twelve miles from Padua, and about three
miles on the right of the high road to Rovigo, in the bosom
of the Euganean Hills. After a walk of twenty minutes across a
flat, well-wooded meadow, you come to a little blue lake,
clear, but fathomless, and to the foot of a succession of
acclivities and hills, clothed with vineyards and orchards,
rich with fir and pomegranate trees, and every sunny fruit
shrub. From the banks of the lake the road winds into the
hills, and the church of Arquà is soon seen between a cleft
where two ridges slope towards each other, and nearly inclose
the village. The houses are scattered at intervals on the
steep sides of these summits; and that of the poet is on the
edge of a little knoll overlooking two descents, and
commanding a view not only of the glowing gardens in the dales
immediately beneath, but of the wide plains, above whose low
woods of mulberry and willow thickened into a dark mass by
festoons of vines, tall single cypresses, and the spires of
towns are seen in the distance, which stretches to the mouths
of the Po and the shores of the Adriatic. The climate of these
volcanic hills is warmer, and the vintage begins a week sooner
than in the plains of Padua. Petrarch is laid, for he cannot
be said to be buried, in a sarcophagus of red marble, raised
on four pilasters on an elevated base, and preserved from an
association with meaner tombs. It stands conspicuously alone,
but will be soon overshadowed by four lately planted laurels.
Petrarch's fountain, for here every thing is Petrarch's,
springs and expands itself beneath an artificial arch, a